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Darren Aronofsky Talks RoboCop Remake

Exclusive: Director talks reinvention

Empire spoke to the great Darren Aronofsky the other day, when he came to town to show off The Wrestler at the LFF. Naturally, we tried to wrestle some info out of him on his forthcoming remake of RoboCop, for MGM.

“It's a real reinvention,” he told us, responding to those rumours that the movie would somehow follow on or be a direct sequel to Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original. “Me and David Self are working on the screenplay. He's a great, great writer and we're trying to do something new and fresh. We'll see what happens when the screenplay comes.”

He wouldn't be drawn, though, on which elements would be carried over from the cyberpunk classic, or if room would be made for the original Murphy – Peter Weller – to make a cameo.

“There'll be...” he started to say, before Prime Directive 4 (“classified”) kicked in and moved him onto safer, vaguer ground. “I'm a big fan of the original. It still holds up as an amazing film, and I think it's more just looking at that same type of material in the 21st century and seeing where it leads us.”

There are few remakes that excite Empire, but this is one of them. Aronofsky is a true visionary, and it's going to be fascinating to see what he can do with this material. We're guessing less splatter, more angst, but either way, it should be gold.